Within week 2’s lecture Kyle discussed user stories, this was a brand new topic for me and I was eager to learn and understand this exercise and what it meant for me and my portfolio.
What is a user story?
- So basically a user story is a way of pining down what you need to do.
What tools do I need?
- sharpie
- post it notes
Kyle began by showing us an example what what a suer story is and it basically three sentences and these questions help creators to figure out what their users need from the system that is being created. Within week 2’s lecture we watched a quick video about user stories and I included my notes from that video below.
The structure
Using the above structure the example that was given was:
AS A…. geolist
I WANT TO… access raw data
SO THAT… I can finish a study
Video notes-
What was my task?
My task within last weeks class was to write a series of job stories that were based around for my portfolio site.
My user story task
Below I have inserted all of the questions that I came up with for this class task based on my portfolio site-
Some more research
The benefits of user journeys:
- reduced risk
- shared understanding
- boost transparency
- brings user closer
- allows for collaborations and many more…
Reflection
What did I learn from this task?
As I have never done an exercise like this before I was unsure of how to start but hearing a few examples I knew that it wasn’t as hard as it seemed and once I started this exercise was quite addictive! This has given my more confidence in what it is that I need to include and do for my own portfolio site.
I really enjoyed this exercise at first I was unsure of how this would help and I was uncertain of the right questions to ask, but once I put myself in the users shoes and state of mind when trying to use my portfolio and when I thought about what an employer is looking for when they look at portfolios I found this task easy and actually enjoyable. Once I got started I could have continued writing questions! I found this to be a very useful task in the end and it has definitely made me think about how to make my site more user friendly and what content I actually need in my website and what is not as necessary.
How can I apply this to my work?
Now I am familiar with this technique and its many benefits before starting a project I will now always complete this exercise as this puts me in the users shoes and helps me to try to understand what they need from my designs and to further understand the user’s perspective. I will now take my own user story that I have created based around my portfolio and use these questions to help my design and building of my own portfolio site.